Q&A Session
On Wednesday the 17th of August 2022, our Creative Director Pete Walsh was invited to participate in a short Q&A session about Giggle Chicken.
Here’s how is went down.
Where did the name “Giggle Chicken” come from? – Dianne Grace, Family Lawyer
A Giggle Chicken is a Kookaburra. We organised a meeting to discuss business names and during the meeting I was complaining that I didn’t get much sleep because a noisy Kookaburra had woken me up super early.
Funnily enough, the exact same thing had happened to my business partner that same morning, and when she told me her version of the story she finished it with – “bloody Giggle Chickens.” I’d never heard a Kookaburra be called that before and I thought it was funny, and I said completely as a joke that we should call the company Giggle Chicken. Then we thought about it a little more, and the more we thought about it, the more we liked it. So we went for that.
Do you do “one-offs” or is it necessary to commit to a certain period of time for ongoing videos? – Sally Nicolazzo, Sally Nicolazzo & Associates
We absolutely do one-offs, and the retainer packages we do offer aren’t suitable for everybody anyway. Because of this, we advise most of our clients to engage us on a project-by-project basis – as this makes the most sense for everybody involved.
The reality is, not everybody needs to be churning out video content monthly and not all content you produce necessarily needs a super professional polish on it.
If you’re already at capacity and are turning customers away, all regular video marketing is going to do is have more people calling you than you can handle. So, if that’s you, you really only need us if you’ve got something big on the horizon. For example, you’re launching a new product, you’re offering a new service, you have a sale coming up, you’re moving offices, you have a customer who has agreed to give you a video testimonial, you’re recruiting, you’re re-branding – things like that.
If you’re trying to find ways to generate more leads and you’re not already using video marketing regularly, or you’re not satisfied with the results your current video marketing is getting, that’s where on-going work with us can be of benefit. However, with the rise of Instagram and TikTok and the influence millennials have on market trends, as well as the Gen-X/MTV generation moving higher up the corporate ladder and boomers slowly retiring, audiences have a higher tolerance for what used to be called ‘home videos’, but is now called ‘user-generated content.’
So, despite it sounding counter-intuitive because it costs us potential work – we encourage all of our clients to shoot content themselves regularly, if they have the time to do it themselves, and really only come to us for larger campaigns with a little more budget.
Things like Vlogs or social media posts we’d suggest doing yourself. And then things like marketing campaigns, ads, product demonstrations, testimonials, landing page videos – where quite often it’s your first impression – we’d suggest you come to us.
If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, we offer a very affordable retainer package where clients can do the shooting part themselves and just send us the footage to edit.
We have a slightly more expensive retainer package where we will do a basic shoot and edit for you monthly, so you don’t need to shoot anything yourself.
We also have a premium retainer package for clients that have more demanding content needs – like fashion brands, or gyms, where they need to be producing content regularly, and everything needs to be quite polished because the marketing landscape is ultra-competitive and aesthetic appeal is part of the product.
Sorry for the long answer.
In summary – Yes, we do one-offs, as committing to retainers isn’t suitable for everybody. For those a retainer is suitable for, we do those too.
Are your videos only for social media? – Sally Nicolazzo, Sally Nicolazzo & Associates
No, they are not. Social media is obviously a big part of what we do because it’s such an important part of the modern marketing landscape. But we can create content for any platform, including traditional broadcast methods like TV and cinema advertising, video billboards, video for in-store installations, as well as entertainment products like music videos, documentaries, short films and things like that.
If it involves video – we can do it.
There are different compliance standards depending on where your video is going to live once we give it to you, and we’re across all of that so you don’t have to be. – In layman’s terms, a video that you plan on sending to Channel 9 to play on TV needs to have different things done to it before you can send it there, as opposed to a video that you plan on uploading to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube – all of which we handle for you.
What is the most unusual video you have shot? – Ross Veitch, Hire A Hubby
Years ago, when I was working in another production company – an agency job came through where we had to go out to a farm house and shoot a web-series. The purpose of the series was to attempt to destroy industrial-grade sensors to prove that they would still work under extreme conditions.
We covered them in mud, we ran them over with a FWD, we put them into a cement mixer, we dropped them off a bridge, we cooked them in boiling hot jam and we hit them with a cricket bat.
It’s not often you get given a product by a client, and get asked to break it. So that was a little unusual.
The project was filmed by myself and long-time friend and collaborator, Matt Jasper from the Jasper Picture Company. The producer of the project, Mud Dey, went on to co-found Giggle Chicken with me and currently works as our executive producer.
What have been the top 3 funnest shoots? – Evan Fowler, Speedy Shower Screens
The music video we produced for Telenova for ‘Why Do I Keep You?’
An unreleased short film I shot with a director named Daniel Kershaw titled ‘Canary’.
And of course, the videos we shot for Speedy Shower Screens with Philma Bocks.
Do you think video testimonials are more valuable than written testimonials? – Gary White, ActionCoach
I absolutely do, and for a few reasons.
One of the reasons testimonials work is because they establish trust. And being able to see the face of the person giving the testimonial is a more effective way to build that trust. You can see that the person giving the testimonial is real, so you can authenticate it in real-time, and you can see that they are passionate about what they are saying.
The other reason is for engagement rates. Video typically has higher engagement rates than text, and audiences absorb more of the information through video. Audiences are also more likely to stop and engage with content when they can see a human face. Human faces have a tendency to stop people from scrolling.
Should promotional videos have subtitles? – Gary White, ActionCoach
Yes, again for a few reasons.
The first is accessibility. The hearing impaired will not be able to engage with your content without captions, and speech-to-text software is unreliable. So, to ensure your message is accessible to all, generating an accurate, grammatically correct caption file is essential for any video – and that is also something we handle for you.
The other reason is platform specific. If the video is going to YouTube, we would suggest uploading an accompanying caption file with the video for the hearing impaired, but if the video is going to Facebook, we would suggest you those burn captions into the video so people don’t enable and disable them – they will always be there. The reason for this is 85% of Facebook users watch videos without sound – they scroll through their feeds, with videos autoplaying on mute, and they stop and read the captions before scrolling on. Whereas, YouTube boasts a higher audibility rate of 95% – most users have the sound on and don’t require subtitles to engage with the audio components of your video.
What’s the ideal running time for a promo video or social media post? – Gary White, ActionCoach
There are several factors that contribute to what a videos optimal length should be, such as what is the video trying to do, who is the target audience and what platform is the video going to be uploaded to.
For example, if your video is a product tutorial for your existing customers on how to troubleshoot something that isn’t working – it doesn’t matter how long it is, you have a captive audience. They need the help, and will follow your video step by step to get it. What matters is making it easy to follow, and not boring as bat shit.
The platform also matters because depending on how you intend to run the video, there might be time restrictions. Bumper ads on YouTube need to be 6 seconds. Non-skippable In-stream ads max out 15 seconds. Skippable YouTube ads max out at 3 minutes, but the user will have the option to skip after 5 seconds, so make it worth their while and don’t waffle.
I understand that people care about optimal lengths because it’s numbers, and numbers are sexy. But a good video is less math and more psychology. Don’t worry about optimal length. The focus really should be on making the content good.
Audiences don’t have short attention spans; they have a lower tolerance for shit content.
What tips do you have for ensuring good content? – Stephen Louey, Webcatcha Digital Marketing Agency
Again, it depends on the target audience and platform. It also depends on the type of video. What makes a good testimonial is completely different from what makes a good TV commercial.
The only real tip that transfers across all videos is, always consider your audience. Your video isn’t for you. It’s ultimately for your audience, so they should be at the front-and-centre of your mind at all times. Every decision is informed by who your audience is, and what you want them to get out of your video.
How do you deal with a client that doesn’t quite agree with your strategy? – Stephen Louey, Webcatcha Digital Marketing Agency
Allow the client to walk away in the sales phase. It is extremely rare for us to get halfway through a project and find out the client isn’t happy with the direction it’s going, and this is because from the minute we take the sales call through to the final delivery of the project, we make sure that everybody is always on the same page.
We do this by being very clear in our pitch, what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. We back that up with extremely thorough pre-production – that is scripting, moodboaring, styleframing, storyboarding. If you can get the pitch and the pre-production right, the rest of the process is just following the instructions you’ve outlined for yourself, and solving any unforeseen problems as they arise- which if your pre-production is good enough, unforeseen problems are few and far between.
If your potential client isn’t liking your strategy, that really needs to be figured out during the pitch. And if you can’t get them to understand your strategy, or you’re not prepared to compromise and alter your strategy during the pitch phase – walk away. You’re not right for each other, there are plenty of fish in the sea.
Do you accept work from clients who have already done their own in-house video to tidy it up for them? – Susan Pierotti, Creative Text Solutions
It depends what’s wrong with the existing video and if we can get access to the original project files.
Without project files, there isn’t much I could really do.
If they want me to change the song in a video, and they can’t provide the project files – that actually isn’t possible, so the answer is no.
If they want me to throw some graphics on top of a video that currently doesn’t have any – that is more doable, with or without project files.
So it depends what they need done and what they have access to.
